2010/5/2 Casey Ransberger <casey.obrien.r at gmail.com>:
> Quality in general is *always* better served by a proofreader than by
> automatic spelling / grammar tools. This is part of why I want to do
> documentation in the trunk: because the trunk model gives us
> gatekeeping and peer review.
>
> If someone finds something in one of my commits which reduces the
> quality of the docs, I'd treat that as build breakage, hamburger-hat
> and all.

Yes. Where are those proofreaders? The trunk breaks when someone screw
up in the code. Will it break when documentation is screwed up? There
is no safeguard as far as documentation is concerned. A spell checker
is a safeguard.

We have a great case study in term of documentation: our wiki. Anybody
can edit pages and it's easy. It just won't happen. The result is
underwhelming.

>
> If you want integrated spell checking, you're probably going to have
> to do the development work yourself, as it doesn't seem to be a
> priority to anyone else.
>
> One thing I keep learning with software is YAGNI.
> http://c2.com/xp/YouArentGonnaNeedIt.html

Can we have this on the main page of the Squeak website, please?!
Beside the download links. "You Aren't Gonna Need It" [but] "Download
Now!". :)

Quote from the website:

“Even if you're totally, totally, totally sure that you'll need a
feature later on, don't implement it now. Usually, it'll turn out
either a) you don't need it after all, or b) what you actually need is
quite different from what you foresaw needing earlier. “

Writing formal texts requires spell checking, whether it is automated
or manually performed, which excludes a). You make it sounds like
nobody ever use a hardcover dictionary or something. It's not going to
be different later than now, as b) implies, because spell checking is
not a new kind of feature; it is a widespread feature and every
software that has it use it in a similar fashion. We already know the
implications of a spell checker and it is not experimental in any way.

Besides, we even have a spell checker with a list of suggestions when
a method is not written properly. Don't you ever use it?!

YAGNI makes sense in many instances but I believe this is one that it
does NOT make sense. It seems to be used as a cognitive bias. It'd be
much simpler if you'd just write “We're not going to have a spell
checker, Ian. Give it up.” :)

Ian.
-- 
http://mecenia.blogspot.com/
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